Power has been defined over the generations as a liberator, a corruptor, and as the ultimate test of human character. It's been long said that anyone can handle hardship, but if you want to know what they're really made of, give them power.

But power, universally craved and frequently abused, comes in varied forms. There is the power that flows through the barrel of a gun, feeding on fear and negativism. The power that is derived from office and authority, or the ability to enforce laws that directly impact lives. And then there is another kind of power, one that is subliminal yet all-pervading, one that combines the craft of making money with the art of influencing the world we live in.

It is this enduring power that the INDIA TODAY High & Mighty special issue has been documenting and celebrating for the last 12 years. But the hallmark of the 50 people on this year's Power List, once again dominated by wealth creators who rely on ideas and innovations in a rapidly changing world, is how they touch us in some way or form in almost everything that we do.

Take them together, as one entity, and you will discover their ubiquitous impact on our lives. We live in houses constructed with the steel and cement that they make. We travel on roads and bridges that they have built. We drive cars engineered by them, which run on fuels explored, drilled and processed by them. We fly airlines they operate, with tickets bought on travel sites they run. We relax by vacationing in their hotels, watching films they have promoted, devouring shows playing on their entertainment channels or matches shown live on sports networks that they manage.

They are the stars delivering an emphatic punchline as the cinema hall whistles its appreciation, and the batsmen who hit a last-ball six as the stadium erupts. They quench our thirst for information by giving us newspapers and news television. They are the anchors who tell us what is happening, acting as interlocutors or inquisitors because the nation wants to know. They supply the electricity we consume and operate the mobile phones we can no longer live without.

They offer us the cigarettes we shouldn't be smoking and provide the spiritual solace that we yearn for. We go to their hospitals and take their medicines. We turn to them for food, hygiene, security, healthcare; we turn to them for almost everything. And we don't even think about it.

Winds of change have swept through India since we put the Power List together in 2013. A restless nation brimming with hope has given Narendra Modi's BJP a singleparty majority for the first time in three decades. A changed equation between government and business houses has, therefore, had a greater impact than usual on the powerful and their positions in the top echelons.

Some of this stems from who can influence policy, but the larger philosophy of what constitutes power and who commands it remains unchanged even through this transformation.

French philosopher Michel Foucault described power as not an institution, not a structure, and not a certain strength that we are endowed with. "It is," he said, "the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society." So if power depends on space, situation and era, the rustle of the pages that follow will help us decode the nation we inhabit, the passion that drives us, and the times we exist in.